Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

1990s. Among the most noteworthy are a cup inscribed with its owner’s name, Aughilde,
and a second bearing the instruction Mitte plino (‘fill it up’!). 46
Hamage is of great importance to a study of eighth-century women’s monasticism
in Gaul as it is a unique example of surviving archaeological remains of an early
medieval monastery. Archaeological surveys have distinguished a second period of the
monastery’s development (from the second half of the seventh century to the beginning
of the ninth century), comprising a wooden building in which the rooms were
reconfigured around a central area. These smaller rooms were perhaps the nuns’ cells.
The building also contained latrines, giving onto an external ditch, and an oven. 47 From
this era, bowls inscribed with devotional phrases such as amen survive, as do needles,
weavers’ pins, clothing clasps and glass beads. These items identify the remains as those
of a female community. The large amount of eating utensils further suggest the eating of
communal meals. 48 Referring to the ‘plan of St Gall’ of 818-823, Louis suggests that the
foundations of Hamage bear a close resemblance to the scola, the location within the
monastery for the education and residence of children. Louis also points to the
corroborative presence of animal bones to suggest that only children would have been
permitted to eat meat, although acknowledges that the adults in the community may not
have conformed rigidly to their rule. 49 The dating of this layer has been determined by the
presence of fibulae of the type of this period, and by two coins, a ‘pseudo-sceat’ of
Danish or Frisian origin, of 720-775, and a coin of Pippin (754-768). Louis posits a
further reconfiguration of the monastery around the time of the reforms of Louis the
Pious (816-7). 50 At this stage, a wooden cloister was constructed. 51
Although eighth-century foundations for women for which evidence still survives
are few in number, enough detail survives for some of them to provide some indication of
the processes of foundation. One of these was made by Aldebert, count of Ostrevant, and
46
Louis, ‘Fouilles archeologiques’, 55.
47
Ibid, 58.
48
Ibid, 60.
49
Ibid, 61.
50
Ibid, 66.
51
E. Louis Hamage, Abbaye Mérovingienne et Carolingienne (Douai, 1996).
183